EASTER EPISTLE OF HIS GRACE GEORGIJE BISHOP OF CANADA

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“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up!” (Jn. 2:19)
Thus says the Lord to those who turned the temple into a place of business and he drove them out!

For the God’s Church is a holy place, and not a place for commerce nor “business”, which is
unfortunatly, often ascribed to the Church. Our great Ivo Andric said: “People are not as bad as bad people think they are”.The bad see everything as bad.

The Lord Jesus Christ founded His Church in three days of suffering and pain on the Cross, and by his glorious Resurrection. This is a lesson for us from the Creator Himself for suffering and misfortune awaits us. ” In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” For this reason we pray for peace in the whole world and for the protection of God’s holy churches, and the stability of God’s holy churches and the union of all”.

It is for us to do, but it is for God to perform miracles. We must abide by what Church has prescribed and not to involve ourselves in what Church has forbidden. It is for us to be witnesses even at the cost of sacrifice, for it is only then that we are pillars of Church which God has founded. And when we have done everything, it remains for us, together with St. Basil to pray and recite that wonderful prayer after Communion: “Completed and perfected, so far as is in our power, O Christ our God, is all the mystery of thy dispensation, for we have had the memorial of thy death, we have seen the type of thy Resurrection, we have been filled with thine unending life, we have enjoyed thine inexhaustible bounty, which is also in the age to come be pleased to vouchsafe us all, through the grace of thy Father, who is without beginning, and of thy holy, and good, and life-creating Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

At the Mystical Supper, prior to His suffering, Christ the Lord informed his disciples, and through them to us, to do acts of love in His memory. Then He said: “Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandaments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kindom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19). How much of an effort do we make to be great in the Kingdom? Little, very little.

If we comprehend the Holy Liturgy as it has remained from St. Basil the Great, we will know to watch out for those who would like to change it according to their intellect.

In these days preceding the Resurrection, we should reflect on this great gift from God. If we perceive Christ in His suffering, then we will easily rejoice in Him in the glory of the Heavenly Father. With the prayers of our Most Holy Patriarch Irinej, and our prayers that he leads us in a Christ-like manner in the Serbian Church of Saint Sava, we have send the Paschal greeting: CHRIST IS RISEN!

Your Intercessor before the Resurrected Lord,

Bishop Georgije of Canada

Lazarus Saturday

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On Saturday March 27, 2010, our Holy Orthodox Church marks Lazarus Saturday.

Lazarus Saturday is the day before Palm Sunday (the feast of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem). This Saturday and Sunday are the connection between Great Lent and Holy Week. On the eve of the celebration of the Resurrection of Lazarus, the forty days of Great Lent are formally brought to an end at Vespers. These two days are the unique and paradoxical days before the Lord’s Passion.

Troparion (Tone 1)

By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your passion,
You did confirm the universal Resurrection, O Christ God!
Like the children with the palms of victory,
We cry out to You, O Vanquisher of death;
Hosanna in the Highest!
Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!

Kontakion (Tone 2)

Christ the Joy, the Truth and the Light of all,
The Life of the World and the Resurrection
Has appeared in His goodness to those on earth.
He has become the Image of our Resurrection,
Granting divine forgiveness to all!

fr. Obrad will serve Divine Liturgy at 10am

The Lenten Prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian (about humility)

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O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk.  But give rather the spirit of  chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen

The first and wonderful fruit of this wholeness or chastity is humility. We already spoke of it. It is above everything else the victory of truth in us, the elimination of all lies in which we usually live. Humility alone is capable of truth, of seeing and accepting things as they are and therefore of seeing God’s majesty and goodness and love in everything. This is why we are told that God gives grace to the humble and resists the proud.

(protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann)

New Managing Committee Sworn in

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Today, members of the newly elected managing committee sworn in in front of altar and fr. Obrad.

We held our first meeting outlining continuing efforts of working together with all Serbian organizations in Calgary on common goals and interests and further strengthening our unity.

Also, we are preparing for Easter as well as party coming on April 10.

Prayer of St. Ephrem Syrian (about Chastity)

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Chastity! If one does not reduce this term, as is so often and erroneously done, only to its sexual connotations, it is understood as the positive counterpart of sloth. The exact and full translation of the Greek sofrosini and the Russian tselomudryie ought to be whole-mindedness. Sloth is, first of all, dissipation, the brokenness of our vision and energy, the inability to see the whole. Its opposite then is precisely wholeness. If we usually mean by chastity the virtue opposed to sexual depravity, it is because the broken character of our existence is nowhere better manifested than in sexual lust — the alienation of the body from the life and control of the spirit. Christ restores wholeness in us and He does so by restoring in us the true scale of values by leading us back to God.

(protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann)

Prayer of St. Ephrem Syrian (about Idle talk)

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At the and of the list we ask Lord NOT TO GIVE US is ‘idle talk’. Here is what protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann says about idle talk:

Finally, idle talk. Of all created beings, man alone has been endowed with the gift of speech. All Fathers see in it the very “seal” of the Divine Image in man because God Himself is revealed as Word (John, 1:1). But being the supreme gift, it is by the same token the supreme danger. Being the very expression of man, the means of his self-fulfillment, it is for this very reason the means of his fall and self-destruction, of betrayal and sin. The word saves and the word kills; the word inspires and the word poisons. The word is the means of Truth and it is the means of demonic Lie. Having an ultimate positive power, it has therefore a tremendous negative power. It truly creates positively or negatively. When deviated from its divine origin and purpose, the word becomes idle. It “enforces” sloth, despondency, and lust of power, and transforms life into hell. It becomes the very power of sin.

Prayer of St. Ephrem Syrian (about Lust of Power)

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We are continuing our series of explanations of the great prayer of St. Ephrem Syrian. Today we are talking about ‘Lust of Power’

If you have problem watching video on this page, please try direct youtube link HERE.

Lust of power! Strange as it may seem, it is precisely sloth and despondency that fill our life with lust of power. By vitiating the entire attitude toward life and making it meaningless and empty, they force us to seek compensation in, a radically wrong attitude toward other persons. If my life is not oriented toward God, not aimed at eternal values, it will inevitably become selfish and selfcentered and this means that all other beings will become means of my own self-satisfaction. If God is not the Lord and Master of my life, then I become my own lord and master — the absolute center of my own world, and I begin to evaluate everything in terms of my needs, my ideas, my desires, and my judgments. The lust of power is thus a fundamental depravity in my relationship to other beings, a search for their subordination to me. It is not necessarily expressed in the actual urge to command and to dominate “others.” It may result as well in indifference, contempt, lack of interest, consideration, and respect. It is indeed sloth and despondency directed this time at others; it completes spiritual suicide with spiritual murder.

(by protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann)

Prayer of St. Ephrem Syrian (about faint-heartedness)

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O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen

The result of  sloth is faint-heartedness. It is the state of despondency which all spiritual Fathers considered the greatest danger for the soul. Despondency is the impossibility for man to see anything good or positive; it is the reduction of everything to negativism and pessimism. It is truly a demonic power in us because the Devil is fundamentally a liar. He lies to man about God and about the world; he fills life with darkness and negation. Despondency is the suicide of the soul because when man is possessed by it he is absolutely unable to see the light and to desire it.

(By Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann)

THE FINDING OF THE HEAD OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

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The great and glorious Baptist John was beheaded according to the wish and instigation of the wicked Herodias, the wife of Herod. When John was beheaded, Herodias ordered that his head not be buried with his body for she feared that this awesome prophet, somehow, would resurrect. Therefore, she took his head and buried it deep in the ground in a secluded and dishonorable place. Her maidservant was Johanna, the wife of Chuza a courtier of Herod. The good and devout Johanna could not tolerate that the head of the Man of God remain in this dishonorable place. Secretly she unearthed it, removed it to Jerusalem and buried it on the Mount of Olives. Not knowing of this, King Herod, when he learned of Jesus and how He worked great miracles, became frightened and said: “This is John whom I beheaded; he has been raised from the dead” (St. Mark 16:16). After a considerable period of time, an eminent landowner believed in Christ, left his position and the vanity of the world and became a monk, taking the name, Innocent. As a monk, he took up abode on the Mount of Olives exactly in the place where the head of the Baptist was buried. Wanting to build himself a cell for himself, he dug deep and discovered an earthen vessel and in it a head, which was mysteriously revealed to him, to be the head of the Baptizer. He reverenced it and reburied it in the same spot. Later, according to God’s Providence, this miracle-working relic [The head of St. John] traveled from place to place, sunk into the darkness of forgetfulness and again was rediscovered. Finally, during the reign of the pious Empress Theodora, the mother of Michael and the wife of Theophilus and at the time of Patriarch Ignatius it was translated to Constantinople. Many miraculous healings occurred from the relic of the Forerunner [Precursor]. It is important and interesting to note that while he was still alive, “John did no miracles” (St. John 10:41), however, his relics have been endowed with miraculous power.

(Source: Prologue of Ohrid by St. Niikolaj Zhichki)